Features Archive - The Vision & Art Project

Freedom from Specificity

This essay by Alice Mattison is from the catalog that accompanies our benefit exhibition, now on view at the National Arts Club.

Film

Robert Andrew Parker

Robert Andrew Parker, Artist of the Mystical and Actual, Has Died

In our short film from 2017, which was shot when the artist was in his mid-eighties, Parker talks about his life.

Manet / Degas

An exhibition, now at the Met, about a complex friendship that ends (sort of) with Manet’s death and Degas’s blindness

Lennart Anderson

From the Archives: How Lennart Anderson Made a Late Masterpiece

When Lennart Anderson's vision declined, he adapted his painting methods and created a new body of masterful work, starting with "Lion Mask."

Renewal and Possibility

As we consider this upcoming year, we turn to the inspiring words and works of artists who have adapted to vision loss.

Agnès Varda

Faces Places and Agnès Varda’s Radical Generosity

On Faces Places' 5th anniversary, a look at how Varda allowed her vision loss to shape the film and make it great.

Film

Serge Hollerbach

Watch Our Newest Film: “Serge Hollerbach: A Russian Painter in New York”

Our award-winning documentary is now available to stream.

Robert Birmelin: Weaving a World of Reality and Dream

Several works spanning Robert Birmelin's career are now on display at the Stanek Gallery in Philadelphia.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer

A current exhibition of photographs taken by Georgia O’Keeffe deepens our understanding of the artist’s late work.

Doris Salcedo

Breaking Radically with Indifference

On Doris Salcedo's artwork and her moving and profound response to political violence.

Ways of Seeing: An Interview with Writer Alice Mattison

An interview with writer Alice Mattison about how vision loss has changed her writing, teaching, and appreciation of art.

Amazing Women Artists with Macular Degeneration

The women artists we've profiled at the V&AP embody the theme of 2022 Women's History Month: Providing Healing, Promoting Hope

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe in Paris

O'Keeffe's planetary perspective shines through at the Centre Pompidou's retrospective of her work, a cosmos outside human presence.

Fall Book Roundup

Books for reading and gifting this fall, including exhibition catalogs and memoirs about vision loss.

Lennart Anderson

Lennart Anderson’s Generative Doubt

The New York Studio School hosts a Lennart Anderson retrospective.

Agnès Varda’s Boundless Creative Vision

Agnès Varda defied expectations when she made her first film in 1955. She was still breaking boundaries more than 50 years later.

Agnès Varda’s Third Life as a Visual Artist

We interview Rosalie Varda, who helped her mother continue creating in the last phase of her career.

Dispatches from the Pandemic: Art and Artists that Made 2020 Better

The work of Virginia Knepper Doyle, Tim Prentice, Irving Guyer, Edgar Degas, and Hedda Sterne enriched a difficult year.

Erika Marie York

Strong Shapes, Vivid Lines, Big Color

An interview with Erika Marie York, 30, who has had Stargardt disease, a juvenile form of macular degeneration, since childhood.

Serge Hollerbach

Digitized Slides Reveal 70 Years of Cityscapes

The Russian émigré artist Serge Hollerbach has spent seven decades drawing and painting his Upper West Side neighborhood—most recently, from memory.

Tim Prentice

Kinetic Sculptor Says “Wind Is the Ultimate Artist”

An interview with kinetic sculptor Tim Prentice on the occasion of a recent exhibit at the Cornwall Library in Connecticut.

Milford Zornes

“Demand to See:” A Painter on His Vision Loss

In writing about his vision loss, Milford Zornes wanted to impart hope. He did so by acknowledging the pain of loss.

Andrea Torrice

The Gestalt of Seeing

An interview with Andrea Torrice about building a successful filmmaking career after developing early onset macular degeneration as a young woman.

Lessons in Creativity from Artists with Macular Degeneration

Eight artists from one generation and how they continued making art after vision loss due to macular degeneration.

Haunted: Images of Blindness Plague Artists with Vision Loss

Western art—and artists—are haunted by negative representations of blindness.

Dahlov Ipcar

Dahlov Ipcar’s Enchanted World

We look back at this artist’s singular life and work on the first anniversary of her passing.

Hedda Sterne’s Recommended Books

Hedda Sterne was a passionate reader. We offer her refreshingly timeless book recommendations as captured in her correspondence with a friend.

Wolf Kahn at the Brattleboro Museum: The Surface & What Lies Beneath

This exhibition of Wolf Kahn's post-macular paintings reveals the artist's greatest strengths.

Doris Salcedo

Art Inhabits the Terrain of the Paradoxical

On the occasion of her exhibition at Harvard Art Museums, an interview with Doris Salcedo on vision loss and artmaking.

Robert Andrew Parker

At 90 Years, a Life of Talent, Luck, Music, & Play

On the occasion of Parker's 95th birthday, a celebration of his work from our archives.

Serge Hollerbach

“There Is Such a Thing as Instinct in a Painter”

In this excerpt from our oral history, Serge Hollerbach talks about making contact with reality through art.

Jenny Oldknow

Something Intangible, Something Shared

An interview with this young, British artist about how she's adapting to her new view of the world.

Robert Hamilton

The Last Free Show On Earth

Robert Hamilton passed away 10 years ago, but his widow, Nancy Hamilton, continues the tradition of exhibiting his work every summer.

Thomas Sgouros

Painting as Poetry

A memorial exhibition at RISD highlights Thomas Sgouros's poetic vision and the dramatic paintings he created after losing his vision.

George Wardlaw

Folding Old Work into the New

In this oral history excerpt, Wardlaw discusses the spirit and spirituality, the past and the present, starting and finishing, and more.

Oliver Sacks: Insights on Vision and Blindness

On the occasion of Oliver Sacks’s passing, we reflect on his writings about the human eye, perception, and his own vision loss.

Lennart Anderson

In Memoriam

Remembering Lennart Anderson.

Dahlov Ipcar

The Prismatic Dimension

As Ipcar's star rises, her vision has declined. Her recent work is unusually simple—and powerful in new ways

David Levine

Rendering the Essence

When, due to macular degeneration, Levine could no longer create the caricatures for which he was renowned, he continued his life-long exploration […]

Film

Lennart Anderson

“Seeing with Light:” A Film Profile of Lennart Anderson

In this short video profile, Lennart Anderson talks about his life. He also works on a portrait of fellow artist Kyle Staver.

Robert Andrew Parker

A studio Visit with Master Artist and Illustrator Robert Andrew Parker

Back in 2014, after seeing Parker's retrospective at The Century Association in New York, we sought him out in person.